Monday, March 30, 2015

Land of lost children: Inside Britain’s 18 abuse inquiries

Jon Bird was sexually abused by a boarding school teacher in addition to being raped
as a 4-year-old by a stranger. Nothing was done about the crimes.

Jon Bird was 4 years old, playing in a park with other kids, when a man approached and offered him a shining coin to follow him into the woods.

“It was half a crown. More money than I had ever seen,” recalls Bird, now 56.

Once out of sight from the others, the man raped Bird.

Bird remembers being confused and crying as he ran to tell his mother, who promptly put him in the bathtub. She said if anyone ever tried touching him again, he should scream and run. She also said he should forget about the attack and never talk about it.

The police were never called. Bird never saw a doctor or a therapist. The rape was swept under the rug.

“I came from a well-to-do middle-class family. My mom was 45 when she had me and I was the third child,” he says, adding that his mother came from a posh background and was a “hands-off” parent.

“She didn’t want to deal with it.”

A lot of England didn’t want to deal with child sex abuse.

Bird’s tale is now being echoed across the United Kingdom by the thousands. The stories suggest systemic sexual abuse of children and generations of police, parents and government officials who did nothing — or, worse, who covered up the crimes. (more...)